Opening Reception on Friday, June 27, 2014 of Craft Alliance's 2014 Works from the Studios. Featured in the juried exhibition is "Chance Encounters" and can been seen through August 24, 2014.
"t.o.u.c.h.-ing" (together our unity creates happiness) - Each of the four couples is connected by a tender touch and serenaded with love songs that "touch" their hearts.
I began working with clay in 1989 in the ceramics studio at Craft Alliance. I make sculptures, vessel forms and hand built platters in terra cotta which I then paint in a range of colored glazes. The frieze of figures on my vessels and in the center of my platters are women and men relating to each other, in conversation, or else dancing, while showing friendship, affection and love. In my work the figures emerge into three-dimensional space, entering just a bit into our world.
I've been making reference to Reginald Marsh and Thomas Hart Benton's work in my vessels, depicting people clustered together in "New York style" street scenes of night life from the 1930s. In more recent work, "T.O.U.C.H.-ing (Together our unity creates happiness)" and "Wall-flower," I place figures emerging from the interior to enhance the narrative of the vessel. "A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou" is a sculptural piece of men and women socializing in a restaurant bar. In all of my work the individual figure and the ways of relating multiple figures express my deepest feelings toward human emotion.
For more information, contact Sandy Kaplan at sandyk@prodigy.net